Last week marked the tenth anniversary of the death of a former colleague of mine.  I was disappointed not to be able to make the memorial evening last week, so wanted to write a post reflecting on some of his success at work whilst I knew him and how we can learn from his achievements.

When I joined Harley-West Training in London and the world of selling, Andy was already successful.  He was enjoying increases in sales revenue and was making and exceeding his targets each month. He was the new top-performer and acted like it.

It hadn’t always been so.

The story goes that he joined a few years before I arrived and struggled to make an impact.  He freely admitted that he’d had no focus, hadn’t taken his work seriously and didn’t even try to understand the world of IT – the world our clients lived in.  This made for a difficult couple of years.  Missing targets, a lack of respect from peers and managers, wondering whether it was going to work out.

Success in sales is down to many things.  Timing is certainly one of them.  In my last post I quoted Elmer Letterman who owns one of my favourite quotes; “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity“.  This is directly applicable to how Andy found his success.

In the year before I joined the business Andy discovered his focus.  He had begun to learn about the market he worked in.  He started to build strong business relationships at a hardware vendor and found out that they were soon to begin accrediting their partners and indeed every engineer who supported their hardware.  He researched all of the medium and large IT companies that would soon  be required to engage in certification training for their engineers.  He encouraged and assisted his/our company to become a certified training partner.  He worked the business opportunity from multiple angles to guarantee success.

He worked hard to make sure the preparation was done for the moment when the opportunity materialised.  Not really lucky but seen as such by some.

By the time I joined the company this certification programme was well underway and growing rapidly.  As one of only three, then two certified training partners in the UK, we enjoyed huge success and built a business stream that focused on supporting the certification needs of the reseller market.  We delivered extensive programmes – both public and private – not only in the UK but across Europe.  Through the strong relationships Andy had built we became the partner of choice for the vendor themselves – training all of their engineers, their partners and receiving recommendations when trying to win other new business.

I benefited hugely from the opportunities this programme presented, including winning my first major contract as a sales person and growing an account to £1M in the process.  I also learnt a lot along the way.

I guess I have Andy to thank in-part for that.  Funny really, but until I sat down to write this post I had not really appreciated his part in my rapidly gained/earned success at that time.

Our company expanded the certification market, developing further certification programmes for other vendors. Of course there were many other people involved, not least the amazing technical trainers who were held in the highest regard throughout the industry.  However, I wanted to share this story to show how one person’s focused step into understanding a business can have such an impact.  Others caught on quickly and achieved success from the programme too, however, Andy had had the foresight to embrace the opportunity, to work hard to understand what it meant at the time and to build relationships to make it a bigger programme as the future rolled forwards.  He also prospected hard to make sure he covered all of the bases in terms of the target market.  He gave himself a competitive edge against his peers.

I think about Andy often.  I remember asking his advice one day at the start of my sales career as my own success was building.  I wanted to know whether I should push to get a deal in or wait until the following month (I’d already reached my monthly quota).  His reply included two well-worn phrases:

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

Make hay whilst the sun shines

I have passed similar advice on to countless sales people over the years. You never know what tomorrow brings.  Never ever sit on a deal.  Always aim to over-achieve.

I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since Andy’s untimely passing away.  Hopefully you can take something away from this story that will benefit you, like I have benefited too.

Filed under: Miscellaneous